Spray Mops are simple cleaning tools that have gained favor by consumers following a recent trend in the popularity of hard floor surfaces (e.g., tile, wood, stone, marble, linoleum etc.) within the housing market. Early hard floor cleaning tools typically comprised a string mop, rag mop, or sponge mop that was used in conjunction with a separate bucket of cleaning solution. Such devices are still in use today, and can be effective, but they are often considered cumbersome to use.
The foregoing mopping devices have been replaced in the marketplace with increasing frequency by flat mops having a flat plate mounted to a long handle, with a removable cleaning pad attached to the plate. Such cleaning pads have included traditional woven fabrics (e.g., string or a knit fabric), sponges, nonwoven fabrics made of polymers, wood pulp, or the like, and the like. Woven and sponge mop pads are generally considered to be reusable, whereas nonwoven pads are often considered to be “disposable” because they are difficult or impossible to effectively clean for multiple reuses.
Flat mops may be used with a separate supply of cleaning fluid (water, detergent or the like), but some are equipped as a “spray mop” having a built-in fluid deposition system including a spray nozzle attached either to the plate or the handle, a vessel filled with liquid cleaning fluid, and mechanism to control the flow of cleaning fluid. Such mechanisms have included, among other things, manually- and electrically-operated pumps, and gravity-operated systems controlled by a valve. The spray frequency and duration are controlled by the user using a hand trigger located on or close to the handle grip. Once the vessel is filled with the cleaning solution of choice and the cleaning pad is installed, the user places the plate on the target surface (typically a floor) and energizes the spray system by squeezing the hand trigger or other mechanism to wet the surface. Once the surface is wetted, the user moves the spray mop pad across the wet surface in forward/aft or left/right directions to wick up the cleaning solution and apply a light downward force to transfer the dirt from the floor to the (now wet) pad.
The plate of a flat mop typically has a large surface (e.g., ˜400 mm wide×˜100 mm deep). The large surface area provided by the plate and underlying pad provides a large cleaning path, which reduces the time required to clean large areas and provides a significant transfer surface to pick up dirt and liquid. However, the force applied by the user is spread across the total area of the pad (e.g., ˜40,000 mm2 in the above example), which is good for covering large areas, but hinders the cleaning result and efficiency when attempting to clean stubborn dirt because it is not possible to focus a large cleaning force on strongly-adhering dirt. Ethnographic observations reveal that users of flat mops address stubborn dirt in a variety of ways. Some users apply more cleaning solution (which is potentially wasteful), and others simply endure the many passes required with the cleaning pad (which is time consuming). Other users apply a greater amount of force to the stain using their sock-covered foot or a separate abrasive pad. Still others attempt to apply more force by moving one or both hands lower on the handle. In any event, these approaches are not considered to be true solutions to the problem of cleaning stubborn dirt, because they can be inconvenient and inefficient to the user.
Some existing flat mop designs attempt to address the issue of cleaning stubborn dirt by adding a scrub brush to the mop. For example, U.S. Pat. Nos. 6,892,415 and 7,225,495 and U.S. Publication No. 2012/0195674 (all of which are incorporated herein by reference) show mops having a scrub brush mounted on the head adjacent the sponge or cleaning pad. However, these devices all require the user to flip the mop head to perform the scrubbing operation, which can be an awkward and inconvenient movement. Furthermore, the device in the aforementioned publication uses a pivoting joint between the handle and the plate, which may increase the difficulty of holding the device with the scrub brush facing towards the floor. Other devices, such as the mops shown in U.S. Pat. Nos. 7,779,501 and 8,166,597, have a scrubbing region built into the center of the base plate, which is activating by increasing the downward force on the mop handle. With these devices, it can be difficult or impossible to tell when the scrubbing region is actually moved into contact with the floor, because there is no separate control to operate it. Also, some of these devices sacrifice a portion of the main cleaning pad to make room for the scrubbing region.
There exists a need to provide alternative solutions to the problems of cleaning stubborn dirt using flat mops, spray mops, and the like.